Corporate & Commercial Law I: Contracts & Employment Law (Coursera)

By the end of the class, students will be able to identify the legal principles that govern various business situations and apply those principles to an issue to determine the outcome when the law is applied to the facts of a scenario.

Syllabus

Week 1

Forming Enforceable Agreements

In this module, you will be introduced to the concept of legally enforceable agreements, also known as contracts. Contracts are the most important legal concept with which businesses must be familiar. This module will introduce all of the elements of a valid contract: agreement, consideration, capacity, legality, and satisfaction of the statute of frauds. By the end of this module, you will be able to recognize a valid, enforceable contract, and identify reasons why an agreement may not be enforceable.

Week 2

Special Rules for Sales Contracts

In this module, you will learn the special rules that apply to contracts for the sale of goods. A set of statutes, known as UCC Article 2, modifies the common law rules governing contract formation, and this module will detail those modifications. By the end of this module, you will be able to determine which contracts are governed by UCC Article 2 and how they differ from contracts that do not involve the sale of goods.

Week 3

Enforcing Agreements

In this module, we continue our discussion of contract law by focusing on the enforcement of agreements. We begin by examining who can enforce contracts, then discuss when contracts can be enforced in court, and end by looking into what types of awards courts will grant when a party has been the victim of a breach of a contract. Throughout this module, we will call special attention to different rules that apply to contracts for the sale of goods.

Week 4

Agency and Employment Law

In this module, you will learn the foundations of the laws governing employees and employers. We begin with several lessons on the law of agency, which underpins all employment relationships. After that, we look at a series of laws that provide workers with various rights, including the right to unionize and take collective action as part of a labor union. By the end of this module, you will have a basic understanding of some of the fundamental rules that govern the employer-employee relationship.